Well, I suppose I'll share my little memory of the Internet back in
the day. My family first got a computer when I was in 4th grade, but
not until months of bugging Dad did my sister and I get the Internet
when I was in 6th...around 1996-1997. DA DA DUM! We were actually
some of the last of our friends to welcome the World Wide Web into
our homes and boy, were we excited! We got AOL, which if anyone
remembers, hasn't always been as crappy as it is now. The first
screenname my dad set me up with was something cheesy like
GymnGirl3, and I was SO excited to go to all the chat rooms and
message boards. My best friend and I would stay up real late on the
weekends and talk to guys online; I even got a "boyfriend" for all
of two Internet seconds. But hey, let's keep that on the DL...it's
pretty embarrassing.

Eventually, but not soon enough, we got rid of AOL, but not before I
got into numerous fights with my dad for the time limit he set for
me on that thing. After learning about my late night escapades, he
set things so I would automatically get booted off at 10pm and
wouldn't be able to sign back on until 6 or so in the morning. Now
that I'm older I understand he was just trying to keep the crazy
psychos at bay. Thanks, Dad.

And there's my story.
I love your site, Todd!!

--------------------------------------------

Okay, this isn't really
about the internet. Its about our first home computers.
And it's not my first memory but I still think it's pretty
good. Back in the late 80s and early 90s we bought a new PC
about every two years as technology was changing rapidly
(anyone remember 8086, 186, 286….?). Our kids were getting
into it right along with us. At the time we had just four
boys and they all viewed the PC as their personal toy. We
had lots of cool shareware games and after Windows we got
Wolfenstein and they all became addicts. They bugged us all
day long about "when are you getting off" and 'can I get on
after you" and "whose turn is next" and "he's lying; he's
been on for an hour, not a half-hour". They were driving us
crazy.

One day I
was talking to someone who happened to mention that they had
the same problem. They decided to have their kids earn time
on the computer by doing chores. I immediately took this
idea "and made it my own" as they say on American Idol.! We
decided to hold a family meeting and told the boys that from
now on they would earn minute for minute computer time for
time spent doing chores. Anyone who has ever been around
pre-teens can appreciate the sight of four boys with their
mouths hanging to the floor. Finally our oldest regained
the use of his voice and validated the whole idea when he
said, "That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard of in my
entire life."

We are still using
this system and it works great. Our oldest son never did
come around to the idea and decided he didn't want to use
the computer anymore. (That was okay with us because he was
just gaming anyway). With the others, I found I could get
my spring cleaning done, attic vacuumed, garage cleaned out
and mowing done without any complaining. Finally, the next
two bought their own PCs. The youngest bugs me all the
time to see if I can think of anything he can do to earn
computer time so he can chat with his friends.

Incidentally, they
didn't realize that we even knew what MySpace was last year
when they posted their profiles. We lurked quietly for
months and then busted them all with one fell swoop, but
that's another story.

Thanks,

Michele

--------------------------------------------

My first internet memory was in 1988/89. I
was a freshman in college
and a guy in the dorm was a computer science major. This was back
when they were still teaching Fortran and Cobal as high end stuff.
Anyway, each of the dorms had a terminal room where you could
access
something called the VAX mainframe...but what we figured out by
accident, trial and error and a little intuition was that you could
substitute another university name during your sign-on and see who
was on their mainframe....Meaning you could talk on-line with
anyone
who could figure out how to respond to you from any of 100's of
universities around the world. I remember striking up random
conversations on-line with strangers in europe, canada and across
the
US from a dorm in Knoxville, TN.